Between
by Diane LD
Summary: They were perfect once. KaraLee, KaraZak.


**Title:** Between  
**Author:** donnatellaMarks, Diane, maroonnotebook on LJ  
**Rating:** Eh, T? Non-specific sexing is mentioned.  
**Pairings:** Kara/Lee, Kara/Zak   
**Timeline: **Set right after the mini, around 33 and Water, when Kara and Lee are starting to reacquaint themselves.  
**Word Count: **4505  
**Disclaimer:** If I owned them, would I really be writing fanfic?

**A/N-** The backstory I prefer to think of. And slight angst warning.

**Summary: **They were perfect once.

* * *

_"Once I knew  
but I've forgotten  
I'll find out when I get to the bottom" _

--Ben Lee, "Get Gotten

This is how they fill the spaces between them.

The jokes, the teasing, the cheery, ringing laughs that sound so false he doesn't understand why nobody else is picking up on it.

The bright smiles and overly loud confrontations, altercations.

They are Starbuck and Apollo—hard, opposite and clashing, with some witty banter to temper things out. Never Kara and Lee, the two best of friends who actually talked about the important stuff once in a while. Never Kara and Lee. 'Cause if Kara and Lee actually had a conversation about themselves and their issues, he doesn't think one, or both, of them would survive.

The exploits, the guise of Starbuck and Apollo keeps them safe from each other, keeps them protected from the spaces that now exist between them.

---

At the Academy, it had just been them. Kara and Lee. She would test his limits and he would keep her in line and sometimes they actually got around to talking about Lee's 'daddy issues' and Kara's fear of weakness. Just Kara and Lee, one entity, and everybody around them knew it.

The 'are they/aren't they' debate started about 10 minutes after they met, but no one could deny that they were Kara and Lee. Lee remembers being very amused by their speculations, telling Kara and them having a laugh. That just...wasn't them. They weren't nearly as dramatic as the rest of the Academy had wanted them to be.

Three weeks into their friendship, Kara had gotten them both suitably drunk, thrown him down on his back and frakked him until he could barely see straight.

In the morning, after the contents of his stomach had spilled themselves out and she had given him some very strong coffee, she explained very simply, a matter-of-fact tone in her voice.

"We would have danced around that for years."

When Lee blinked dumbly, she shrugged, stretching herself out in manner that reminded him of a cat. "I hate anticipation."

So she kept him from burning out and he kept her from flunking out. They were just…them.

He knew she was a chatty drunk and never knew when to stop. He knew she wasn't a real blonde and that everyone noticed when she entered a room. He knew she blew off the therapy the Academy medical team had set up when they had seen an x-ray of her hand taken after a pyramid injury. He also knew that a part of her sometimes wished she'd kept the appointment, 'cause when it thundered, her nightmares took over. Not every time the sky opened, not even all that frequently. Just…sometimes. He's still pretty sure he's the only one who knows why. She was a chatty drunk, but she didn't share certain things with just anybody.

She knew that deep down, he was horribly insecure, wished he was taller, and had spent his entire life trying to meet the expectations of his father. She knew that he couldn't play pyramid for shit and he'd been the one who caused the computer 'glitch' with the sprinkler system that kept them out of classes for days. She knew he had a competitive streak just as wide as hers; he just hid it better. She knew that he approached everything in his life with the same intensity he approached his studies, and he always tried to live up to the call sign he had been christened with, the call sign of a god. And she knew she could kick his ass six ways to Sunday whenever he started getting cocky.

When Kara said that she had nowhere to go on Colonial Day, that she had planned on staying at the Academy, Lee took her home.

Zak had gone off with friends and his mother shook Kara's hand and left for her new boyfriend's family barbecue, leaving them alone. They spent the next few hours talking, slumping lazily on the living room couch, raiding the fridge and his mother's liquor cabinet.

That night, there were fireworks and they felt obligated to watch them, because, well, it was Colonial Day and what was Colonial Day without fireworks? So they watched from the rooftop outside his bedroom window, and when she kissed him it was thank you.

The next morning, he smelled pancakes. His mother's pancakes. Those were worth getting up for.

He detangled himself from a bare and drooling Kara, shaking her slightly.

"Geroffme," she said into the pillow, her voice muffled and unfocused.

"There are pancakes downstairs. You coming?" He asked, pulling on some sweatpants and a tank.

"Goway," she said, almost irate. Only Kara could be that angry and still be asleep.

He trudged down the stairs to greet his mother and Zak in the kitchen. His brother, 16 and much more rebellious than Lee had ever been, looked more than hung-over, which just served as further testament to the overwhelming power of Caroline Adama's pancakes. The breakfast-chef extraordinaire herself stood by the stovetop, spatula in hand.

"I see your friend never made it to the guest room last night," Caroline Adama had smiled knowingly at him. He was technically an adult, yes, but his mother implying anything about his sex life was downright creepy.

"It's not like that," he explained quietly, deliberately trying to annoy his quite obviously eavesdropping brother. "We're just…" he couldn't find a word that described them accurately, so he took the easy way out. "We're friends."

His mother pursed her lips tightly but said nothing even though Lee could tell she really wanted to. She finally sighed and offered up a quiet, "Be careful."

Lee pretended not to hear. "We're friends," he repeated.

"Not anymore," a voice said from the doorway. Kara entered the kitchen, taking a seat at the table. "A true friend tells you when there's pancakes."

His mother had smiled broadly at Kara, watched as she ignored Lee's protests to that he had, in fact, informed her of the pancakes.

"Didn't."

"Did."

"Didn't."

"_Did_."

"Children, _please_," his mother had said, setting a jug of syrup on the table.

Lee still maintained that he had shared the pancake news, but Kara had a mouthful of food and syrup dribbling down her chin and all he could do was laugh as she tried to hold a conversation with his brother.

She flashed a grin in his direction, making sure he could see every last bit of chewed-up pancake in her mouth.

The weekend ended too soon and when his mother hugged him goodbye, she grabbed Kara too, who stiffened at first but relaxed into it. "Thank you for having me," she had said, and Lee pretended to be shocked by her show of politeness. She gestured rudely to him over his mother's back.

"Anytime," Caroline Adama replied back. His brother, a wide grin on his face, waggled his eyebrows suggestively in Kara's direction. "Oh yeah, _any_time." He finished it off with a wink.

Both Kara _and_ Lee slapped him hard upside the head.

Kara and Lee. Kara Thrace and Lee Adama—just Kara and Lee. No spaces. No gaps. Two locking puzzle pieces in a sea of mismatched, oblong shapes. They flew together in perfect synchronicity, they frakked on occasion, but most of the time they were _honest_ with each other and Lee can't decide if he misses _that_ or fresh fruit more.

It takes him a split second to decide that a man can live without fresh fruit. There's no such thing as synthetic, biochemically-engineered honesty.

---

Then he went off to War College and she went off to the Officer Candidate School, and then to teach at the Flight Academy, and the spaces between them began to grow.

They were small things at first.

There was no one to steal his sweatshirts and stain them with ketchup and horrible table etiquette at the War College. No one who was all that much fun to annoy. No one to drink him under the table so magnificently, even he would have to half-consciously applaud through bleary eyes.

Despite the distance, they were still Kara and Lee, on the phone or in the indulgence of handwritten letters. He was Lee and he still worked far too hard, and she was Kara, still outrageous as ever. Dating one of her students, if he could believe that. It had sounded like something only she would do, and he had grinned broadly, almost proud.

"You'll really like him," she had said, during one of her rare visits. There had been a glint in her eye, a secret smile that he immediately called her on.

"You'll see."

The subject was dropped and pretty soon they were laughing like they hadn't spent the last two years apart, adjusting to life without each other's constant presence to help buoy them above the rising water.

They went out to a bar and won a _lot_ of cubits at Triad because no one knew to never bet against the great and mighty, self-proclaimed Triad Queen Starbuck. They had drank and stumbled and drank some more.

Lee remembers some sort of melancholic tune that filled the air and made the buzz between his ears seem pleasant and bearable. She had swayed with the music in her chair, laid her head upon his shoulder.

"I've missed you," he had murmured, and there was a short silence.

"We're getting married," she said quietly, distractedly, almost as if she was trying to tell it to herself.

For a second, Lee was confused. "One would assume I'd be informed of our impending nuptials." He turned to Kara with a questioning look that was met by a disbelieving stare.

"Did you just use the phrase 'impending nuptials'?" She asked, teasing him in a manner that was pure Kara. "The drunker you get, the more words you know." She giggled, taking a swig straight from the bottle of ambrosia they had bought for themselves. "Classic Apollo."

But Lee was still confused and it must have showed in his face, because she took pity on him.

"_I'm_ getting married. My… the guy I'm seeing. He asked me last week." She held up her finger and tiny band encircled it, glinting in the dim light of the bar. "We're not telling people yet, but…I don't know. You don't count."

"I'm not people?" he had protested, but he knew what she meant.

His next drink burned his throat as he swallowed it whole. His eyes watered. The next one hurt, too.

He cannot remember the rest of that night. Only the morning, when he awoke with a skull-splitting headache and Kara passed out beside him. And, when he ran to the head, the way he tried to forget.

---

A month later on Founder's Day, Kara had a place at the family table.

It was apparent to him in all of 25 seconds as to why she was there—the way she stared at his baby brother and the way he looked back at her with an expression that frankly, made Lee uncomfortable. It was…Zak. He was the one she has whispered about a month ago. His _brother_ was the one who had conquered the great and independent Kara Thrace. He smiled for them, because they were so sickeningly cute he was having trouble believe that it was actually _Kara_ making with the googley-eyes.

Kara Adama.

Kara Thrace Adama.

Mrs. _Zak_ Adama.

"Aren't they adorable?" his mother had asked, beaming.

He smiled, but clenched his jaw and ground his teeth silently until it hurt and he wasn't quite sure why he had done so.

They weren't Kara and Lee anymore.

They were Kara, Zak, and Lee, and he'd just have to adjust to the fact that his baby brother now stood between them. The weed that shot up between Caroline Adama's two most prized flowers. He struck that thought down—his brother was _not_ a weed. His brother was a great guy who made Kara happy, and the three of them had so much _fun_ that afternoon, playing around like children, throwing a ball and watching his mother snap a few hundred pictures which she had promised to distribute, in triplicate.

Lee could adjust. He was flexible. He could work with this new situation, really.

Kara, Zak, and Lee. _Three _peas in a pod.

That was all well and good, Lee had thought, except that two of the peas were frakking _very_ loudly in the next room. Lee, the lonely, single pea. He was being maudlin and absurd for no reason at all, and he knew it and Lords, _did they ever get any sleep?_

_--- _

Kara, Zak, and Lee. Kara, Zak, and Lee. Kara and Zak. And Lee.

When his assignment took him closer to home, closer to Kara and Zak, like, across the base closer, Lee decided that the gods had it in for him.

Because, really, they _had_ to have been angry to saddle him up with this. Kara had always counted on him. _He_ was the one, the only one she ever opened up to. He was the one who knew how to comfort her right, and that smothering her with his words of wisdom really wasn't the way to go. He was the one she counted on to bail her out of hack, or bring her coffee in the morning after a night of heavy drinking, or run with her as she ran away her anger.

'Cause they must have been _pissed_ to make the new person she counted on his brother.

But really, they made each other so happy Lee thought he should just get over whatever he was feeling. Except that, to get over something, you kind of had to know exactly what the problem was. And he didn't really know what he was feeling. He wasn't jealous. He wasn't. And he wasn't in denial. He wasn't angry. And he wasn't in denial about that either. He'd just thought…when he met Kara he was sure she was going to be in his life. For the rest of it.

He'd been right about that, he guessed. He'd never really thought about the capacity.

She still ran with him in the mornings, mostly because Zak hated running. The first time, she'd been there when he showed up. She'd matched him step for step as they circled the Academy track, and with each lap of silence it got harder and harder to start a conversation until Lee just stopped trying. She just let herself out after a few miles, without a word of goodbye, and Lee kept running, running until his lungs felt like they were going to burst from his chest and vomiting was becoming a strong possibility.

The next morning it happened again. And the next, and the next… an unspoken routine.

They had been out to dinner with a few of their friends when Zak had jokingly complained about Kara's devotion to getting up, starting the day with her run.

"I just don't understand. You get up when it's _dark _out to run around and around a track, alone. Just around, and around again. The scenery never changes, and unless you like talking to yourself…boring. And besides, that time could be spent with me. In bed," his brother's trademarked cheeky grin was out in full force.

Lee raised his eyebrows as Kara shot him a look that clearly said, "Shut up or I will kick you where the sun don't shine, repeatedly."

She had kissed Zak's nose, and replied, "Maybe I do like talking to myself."

"Of course she does," Lee had replied, smirking. "She's the only one who'll laugh at her jokes."

Her eyes said 'thank you' while she stuck her tongue out in his direction. "At least they're better than yours'."

He had snorted, and a mocking tone came from his lips. "'Cause, 'A marine, a Cylon, and a Viper pilot all walk into a bar…' is really the highest point of comedy."

"Damn straight," she replied, chuckling, and the rest of the table joined in.

The next morning, Lee broke their running silence by asking her what the hell kind of drugs she was taking. He didn't have to clarify; she knew what he was talking about and winced. Well, as much as Kara winced, which meant you really had to know what to look for to spot it.

"It's not like you get up every morning to frak me," he said to her, slowing their pace to a walk in order to hold the conversation.

"I know," she said, "It's-"

"We go _running,_" he interrupted, speaking quickly, his breaths coming short half from exertion and half from 'didn't-want-to-think-about-it.' "Running. We're hiding this because..?"

"I know! Will you shut up?" She had said, beyond irritated. "It's just... Zak doesn't need to know everything I do." She gave him a look that clearly said that the conversation was over and started running again.

He'd frowned, but left it at that and ran hard to catch up with her.

A few weeks later, Lee remembers doing paperwork in his office on a bright sunny day. Flight reports, schedules, endless forms. He had despised it. It was mind-numbingly dull. He thinks that maybe it wouldn't have bothered him so much if he had experienced life on a 33 minute rotation.

His brother had burst into the office, uninvited, without knocking and proceeded to hassle him for a few minutes about his dedication to the job.

"You know that thing in the sky? The bright orange ball? It's called the _sun_. The sun helps trees and flowers grow big and strong. Humans, especially Lieutenants in the Colonial fleet, need the sun to help them grow big and strong, too," he said, like a schoolteacher to a bunch of children.

Lee had only looked up from his papers and shot his brother a Look.

"Come on, Lieutenant Adama. You have the start of a serious vitamin D deficiency going on. It's nice out. Come outside, it won't kill you. At least, I hope it won't…it's been so long, it's impossible to tell." Zak was smiling wider than should have been allowed.

"You're hilarious, Cadet." Lee had mock glared in Zak's direction, but he seemed unaffected, like he had a shield that deflected all negative energy.

"Come out," his brother brought out the whine he knew Lee found so annoying it usually got him his way.

"Fine, fine. I'm coming," he had sighed, a long, over-exaggerated exhaling of air that made his brother laugh.

They had played a game of one-on-one pyramid, and somewhere between talk of Zak's classes at the Academy and Lee's seemingly endless ambitions, the conversation turned to Kara.

"We're getting married," Zak said, and Lee stood up, ball in hand, blinking dumbly.

"Yeah?" Lee had asked. "What about it?"

"Wait. You knew?" Zak had been confused.

Lee had nodded, "Kara told me…about four months ago," he said, trying to place the memory of a bar and too much ambrosia. He shrugged and Zak looked confused and a little upset.

"Oh. It's…Nevermind. Well, we are," his brother had bitten out, unsure of what to say. "This was supposed to be a 'big news' conversation," he'd shrugged and laughed it off, a smile coming to his face.

"Sorry," Lee smiled. "Have you told Mom and Dad?"

"Not yet, but I wrote Dad and said there was something Kara and I had to tell him the next time he comes down to Caprica. He's never met her, though, so maybe it won't mean anything."

Lee shrugged, weighing the situation. "He's a pretty smart guy," he said, trying to keep the admiration from his tone.

"Yeah, he is," Zak had smiled. The sun was beginning to set on the horizon, and the light was beginning to fade, painting everything a deep orange and red. "We're going to have the wedding sometime after I graduate. I want you to be my best man."

"Wow," Lee said, stunned by the offer, pleased and kind of sad all at once. "I mean, of course."

"I mean…if it's not weird. I want you to be my guy, but if it's too weird for you, then you don't have too…" his brother had trailed off, looking nervous and edgy.

"Why would it be weird?" Lee asked, tossing the pyramid ball he held from hand to hand.

"I don't know... Because you and Kara… you guys used to…" he trailed off again, looking even more jumpy.

"Kara and I…we never…it was never like that between us. We're just friends, Zak. That's always been it." He wasn't sure he was telling the truth, and nor was Zak, who smiled ruefully at him.

"I appreciate the lie."

"I'm really happy for you guys. I mean it," Lee said, telling the truth, or at least what he wanted to be the truth. "You make her happy."

Zak's eyes lit up so brilliantly that he decided that Kara, Zak, and Lee could be just as good as Kara and Lee.

But after a while, it was never just Kara, or even just Zak, anymore. It was always Kara and Zak. KaraZak. The KaraZak monster always smiled and laughed and fought but never really meant it. They giggled and kissed, and really, Lee loved his brother, but seeing his tongue slobber all over Kara's mouth fast lost any novelty it had once held and got kind of gross.

But he smiled, and refused to admit that maybe, on some level, in the deepest, farthest reaches of his subconscious, he might be the littlest bit jealous of his brother.

'Cause he wasn't. He _wasn't._ He was happy for them. Really. Really frakkin' _happy._

Eventually, KaraZak thought he needed to get laid and should find someone worth spending time with. KaraZak doubled with him on perfectly nice dates with perfectly nice women. It was Kara, however, not KaraZak, who drove them away with 'accidental' spilling of drinks and a well-placed, quietly murmured "skank."

Sometimes, Lee would think that maybe there was a little bit of Kara and Lee left in the world. After all, he got Kara in the air. His brother was a shit pilot, and even when he watched Zak get his wings, Lee knew that the younger Adama would never be at the same level as the legendary Starbuck and Apollo. They were always going to be Kara and Lee in the sky, and nothing was going to change that. Not the engagement, not the wedding, not the future KaraZak hybrid children that would come eventually. Lee knew he was a horrible person, but somehow he couldn't bring himself to care. He took perverse joy in knowing he had a part of Kara that Zak could never really touch.

He secretly wished it could just be like it was, but he'd take what he could get. KaraZak and Lee wasn't _so_ horrible.

---

Suddenly, Zak was ripped from between them, and they were Kara and Lee again, except with a huge, gaping hole in their chests that made it hard to breathe. They were Kara and Lee again, but not like he remembered. They were Kara, emptiness, and Lee and the gulf between them hurt him almost as much as the fact that his brother's viper had exploded and Zak wasn't ever going to laugh at him or tell him he was working too hard or drag him out drinking again. They were Kara and Lee again, his brother's ghost between them and him feeling incredibly, irrationally guilty that he ever wished Zak out of the picture.

'Cause then, he got his wish and couldn't help the sobs the tore from his throat. He would have done anything to change it, to stop the random outbursts of tears and keep Kara from disintegrating, to stop the feeling in Lee that he was sure one day she would just disappear.

He'd taken leave and stayed in his mother's house, the house he grew up in, where they had once been a family. Mom, Dad, Lee, and Zak.

The Adamas.

His bedroom brought back memories so strong he couldn't bear the photographs, made them face down in their frames. One more memory of a six year old Zak and a nine year old Lee playing Cylon and Viper pilot hitting him on the way to the bathroom and he was sure a breakdown was imminent. His old bedroom was almost too much to bear; he hadn't even been into Zak's.

But Kara had. His mother had taken her in after the funeral, for the few days she had left on Caprica before she went up into space. His father had offered her a position on the _Galactica. _

His father.

"How can you look at him? How can you work with him knowing that the only reason Zak ever got into that plane was because my father _expected_ him to?" he had said, bitterly, his voice cracking yet venomous.

She didn't reply. She only shook her head and looked away, trying to hide the tear Lee knew was there.

She had holed up in Zak's old room, breathing in the dust and clutching his childhood toys. He imagined her hugging his pillow, going through the drawers and finding Zak's old teddy bear and the pictures he drew of Mark II Vipers when he was five. Lee could have shown her, helped her find the important things, but he didn't. His brother had been dead for 86 hours and he didn't even know what the frak he was doing anymore. Was there a time when he did?

Kara got thinner, and paler, and felt so guilty for any smidge of emotion she felt that wasn't grief. Zak was gone and she was still alive and any laugh turned to a raw-throated sob.

But mostly, they just got older. They aged a year each day after the funeral, drank the night away until Lee would find her in his bed. She wasn't one to beg, but she looked damn close and that scared him more than anything else on the Colonies. That Kara wasn't Kara anymore. She'd leave before the silence stretched too long between them, before they would _have_ to talk about why and what they were doing. A quick roll out of the bed, a quick gathering of crumpled clothes and she was out the door, into the room across the hall.

Zak's room.

Kara and Lee no longer existed anymore; his brother's amicable chatter had vanished and left only the awkward silence. Kara and Lee no longer existed, so he fled, and didn't see her face until the end of the world.

---

Kara and Lee haven't had a decent, honest conversation that didn't revolve around Zak in years. Kara and Lee are no longer Kara and Lee. They're Kara. And Lee.

So they'll be Starbuck and Apollo. Brash and loud and cheerful masks that they hide behind to make the distance between them almost easy to bear.

Their call signs, their flight personalities, Starbuck and Apollo—it fills the spaces. Between Kara. And Lee.


End file.
